


Bards and Kings

by lferion



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Highlander: The Series
Genre: 5th Century CE, Bardship, Beaches, Gen, Ocean, Rescue, the start of a beautiful friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Ceirdwyn and a refuge that is both a place and people.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32
Collections: Highlander Secret Santa (ShortCuts) 2019





	Bards and Kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eliyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eliyes/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to the Usual Suspect, for advice and encouragement above and beyond. Also to Amandr, for patience above and beyond.

Tell the story straightly, the bard had said (the warrior, word-weaver, wind-bringer, fell and fierce and not like him, though even longer lived), the story matters, how you tell it, and you must know what the story is, even when — especially when — the tale you tell is different, for whatever reason. Lie not to yourself. But know — and you do know — that there are different truths, different ways of telling the story true. What tale are you telling? What truth are you trying to drive home? It helps if you know, but not everything is knowable, and little truly known.

Tell the story straightly. Tell the story.

* * *

It was time to leave Paris. Time again. Too many Immortals, too many reminders, too many losses. Much as she liked Duncan, her colleagues at the Université, the old man who greeted her every morning from his tiny, perfect garden in front of his not at all tiny house. Time to go home for a span. Time to stand on the western coast of the isles that would always be her true land, true home, and breathe the salt-spray air, look at the horizon that went to infinity, to elsewhere, to otherwhen, but was anchored yet to now, to here.

Ceirdwen had found _him_ on the beach, black hair filled with sand, battered by the sea, by time and memory. But not defeated. Never defeated, her star-eyed Ri Ardan, of the shining brow and the voice of wonder. As dauntless as his iron-browed fellow castaway, her own kind of Immortal.

* * *

The beach was still there, shell-strewn sand, shelving rock, cliffs high enough for defense and discouragement of the casual beach walker, low enough to still climb at need. Even the cave was still there, looking much as it had a millennia and a half ago. 

She had not noticed any real difference the last time she had been here, several centuries past, but it had been a bowl of mist and sea-spray, and they had all been in a very great hurry. Looking at it now, thinking of the several times she’d seen it, it really was unchanged.

* * *

The first time she had been here, she stumbled upon it, nearly tumbling down the cliff in exhaustion and something very like despair, as the eastern sky lightened behind her, and stars beckoned in the west. Days and nights behind her was another battlefield, another dead Chief, another pointless slaughter. Not Romans, this time, lawless men, looking to no lord, no chief, no king but their own desires. But there had been many more of them than there was of her. She hadn't been sure she wanted to live, though she certainly did not want to die, not even the temporary death that falling down the cliff would have given her. So instead of falling, she had skidded and slid and scrambled down, to find herself breathless but whole at the bottom, white foam curling not far from her feet, small waves pushing at a jumble of dark shapes on the sand.

As the light strengthened and the mist thinned, the shapes resolved into limbs, torsos, heads of long dark hair tangled like seaweed. The broken remains of a coracle lay further up the beach, but the bodies — two it seemed, clinging together — were whole, if battered. The sea seemed to be trying to pull them back; one of them at any rate: the longer, paler legs snatched and tugged at more vigorously, the fine long fingers dug into the sand slapped at, the sand scooped away, the smooth face pummeled with water. The other legs and hands and the beak-nosed face were incidentally splashed and pushed, not pulled. Were the waves trying to drown the one, if not both?

Ceirdwen decided she was having none of that, and gathered up her ebbing strength to pull the limp figure from the grasping, selectively angry water. After a moment, the beak-nosed person began to stir and gasp for air. Ceirdwen stumbled headlong in the sand as a Presence like gongs and lurs and hilltop thunder(*) rolled over her. The sea made one last effort to claim the man she had hold of, but she'd fallen up the beach, away from the water, and had managed not to let go.

"Mine!" she cried, as if the sea could hear her, "I claim him — both of them — as mine, salvage-right and warrior-right!"

Apparently, the sea could hear her, or chose to cease fighting to pull the man back into its depths. The curling, grasping waves stopped reaching up the beach, the slapping spray stopped stinging their faces. One last wave splashed at her, drenching but not pulling, as if to say 'on your head be it, if you want him that badly' and retreated down the shelving sand, leaving them wet and breathless but no longer fighting to hold on to land and air. Ceirdwyn resolved to make some kind of gift-offering, since either way, her words stood. "I thank you, Sea-lord, for hearing me!" she called to the water. "I shall not forget."

"Are you sure that was wise?" her fellow Immortal said dryly, breathlessly, recently still lungs not yet sure of the air.

"Wise or not, it is done now." She lifted her chin with resolution, and got back to her feet.

Presently, Beak-nose picked himself up off the sand as well, and together they got the still insensate (and really absurdly tall) fellow up the beach to where the shoaling pebbles marked the end of the water's ordinary reach. Ceirdwyn of course had her sword with her, but neither of the men had more than a belt-knife, if that. They barely had clothes. Something would have to be done about that, and soon, but for now, a fire would suffice to keep the chill off. And it was still Summer. The sun brightening the sky would presently come up over the cliff and warm the cove.

At some point, she would have questions, but for now, the work of living was enough to keep them more than busy enough. She had an odd confidence that the other man (or mayhap one of the fae-folk — there was a definite fine point to the ear not hidden in the long and tangled black hair) would wake sensible and soon.

Between them, Ceirdwyn and Beak Nose (she was tempted to call him that, though she managed to merely think it -- it didn't seem the wisest way to begin an acquaintance with one of their kind) got a fire laid and lit from the plenitude of driftwood that had collected among the stones at the edges of cove. She had determined, with an effort, that the other man (or whatever he was) lived — the thud of his heart was slow but regular, and his breath likewise.

* * *

Many a time, sitting on a rock, looking out at the morning sun glittering on the small billows of the restless sea, she thought of spirals and journeys, comings and goings, the way things circled around, if one could watch over a long enough time. 

Ceirdwyn had never wondered where she came from — she was a child of the clan, a fosterling among fosterlings, loved and cared for and encouraged. Other immortals did not have that surety. 

She called her rescuee the bard from the sea. He'd laughed, the kind of laugh that was also, underneath, a cry of pain and a shout of defiance. She didn't know what to call the other one, at first, the Immortal like she was. They had names of course, several even. The name he had given her at first had been nothing meaningful, washed away almost as soon as heard.

These were private names, names that would not change in her mind, unlike the outer, public names any kind of long-lived or immortal person needed to change periodically, or face very uncomfortable questions. Fixed names, like the cove was a fixed place, touchstones in a long life with little that stayed the same for long.

It didn't matter where she came from, it mattered where she was. It mattered that she loved and was loved, cared and was cared about. Family was where you found them, fought for them, remembered and was remembered by them. Shining-Brow, the bard from the sea, Iron-brow, the keeper of tales. Taliesin, Talhaern. Names to hold onto.

* * *

When the sun made its way above the cliff-edge, pushing the mist away from the middle of the cove but not dispersing it at the edges, sending shafts of gold to warm the sand, Ceirdwyn's sea-prize began to stir.

They had arranged him on his side, so he would not choke did his lungs or stomach need to get rid of the seawater he had undoubtedly taken in. At first, he did just that, Ceirdwyn holding his hair away from his face, Beak-nose supporting his shoulders and murmuring in a tongue she thought she might understand if she heard it clearly and didn't think too hard about it. Telling him he was rescued; that they were safe, she guessed. Soon enough the spasms passed — almost as soon as they would have for one of her kind — and he turned to lie on his back, finally opening his eyes. 

They were grey, and starry-bright. "Shining-Brow" she breathed, Naming him. "Taliesin."

He grinned at them both, flat on the sand, bedraggled and wrung as a half-drowned kitten, but not at all fragile. "If I am Shining, you are most surely Iron, my friend, to have brought us both safe to shore." 

"Talhaern, then." Ceirdwyn said, the language of this coast not far different from that they were speaking. A much better name than Beak-nose. "Iron-brow." She was the one without a name to them now. Best to repair that omission, "Ceirdwyn" she said, hand to heart, "Once of the Iceni."

Accepting the address, Talhaern (not beak nose) nodded acknowledgement, while already speaking, "It was not I who managed it in the end. She did. She proclaimed us hers, not his. Warrior-right and salvage-right." 

"Ceirdwyn." Taliesin repeated, the syllables singing in his voice. "By Word-right, as well, then, Lady Word-wright[**]. Thrice spoken, thrice claimed, thrice named."

Talhaern nodded slowly, agreeing.

He looked searchingly at her, and after a long but not uncomfortable moment of scrutiny, he continued, addressing her with piercing directness. "So, my lady, kin or kind of my friend who likes not the Sea, and for good reason, you have taken my part against the wildness of the waves, What would you have of me?"

It struck her that this was a far more important question than it seemed on the surface. And also that it was important to answer both truly and meaningfully, in the moment. "Live," she said. "I want you to live, fully, purposefully, with care and intent, making, doing, being. No throwing yourself back in the sea, or anything like that. I don't think you come back from that like we do."

The look on his face was all she needed to know that she was right about that at least. And that he did know of what she spoke. "I accept your charge. Well spoken, well claimed, well named."

* * *

They burned the remains of the coracle on the beach, making a ceremony of it, when Taliesin recovered enough of his strength to stand without help. Afterward, Ceirdwyn followed up on her promise to herself to find a suitable gift to give the Sea, collecting the prettiest, most perfect shells, and crafting a necklace of them, threaded with summer flowers. It floated long and far on the waves, and she knew it had been accepted, appreciated, when one of the flowers came back to her on a chuckling curl of foam.

Talhaern declared that if he was to be keeping company with bards and kings (making no distinction as to which title might fit which person) better he rank with them than below. The look he was given only made him laugh, and Ceirdwyn decided she liked him. He chose the name Anieron to go with the Talhaern, and all the rest of the Summer, they rested and recovered themselves in the warmth and safety of the cove with it's sheltering cave and bright, fresh stream.

* * *

There was no guarantee that either of them would be at the cove or nearby at any given occasion. They were neither of them that predictable, that fixed in habit or desire. But as it happened, one or the other — much more often Ardriardan, Taleisin (neither of those were his 'real' name, though they were real enough, but they were what she had known him by the longest) but Aneiron Talhaern often enough, and it was not unknown to find them both in the vicinity.

But even if neither were there, it would be good to visit, even stay awhile. 

There was a cave in the cliff, almost invisible unless one knew where to look, and even then it appeared merely a gap between two slabs of rock, narrow and shallow. But only the entrance and first few feet to the back of what was more a wall of limestone than a deep mass were actually narrow. Once one turned, it broadened out, the ceiling rose, and the space was quite dry and comfortable. Convenient rocks and bits of wood made seats, and various ledges and hollows in the walls made shelves and places to put bedrolls for sleeping. 

There was even a hearth, which drew perfectly and never smoked, not in all the years Ceirdwyn had known the place.

* * *

The sea was calm when Ceirdwyn arrived at the cove. The water sparkled green and blue, the pale sand unmarked by any other than the gulls and wading birds. It was very quiet, and as soon as she made her way down the hidden path, she felt the peace of the place settle around her like a comforting shawl. It wasn't Holy Ground in the sense of having been sanctified by people, like a grove or a temple or a church, but it was sacred somehow, not wholly of the day to day world. Sea and Air and Earth met here, singing, speaking, resting. A place to pause in the Story, a rest in the Song, but it wasn't a place she could stay for too long -- too much life to live and story to tell.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> *Methos’ Presence — my theory is that the older one is, the more distinct the Presence to other Immortals. Very young immortals (less than 100) cannot tell the difference: all Presence is whatever sensory assault they are tuned to. As they get older, stronger, etc, they can discern some differences. Very old Immortals can manipulate their Presence — damp it down, tune it, pull it in, spread it out; and can perceive other Presences with finesse and precision. The key is, they have to be alive, not temporarily dead, in order to do this. Thus, Ceirdwyn is hit with Methos' full Presence as he revives, and she is old enough to recognize it as something special. Though at first it just knocks her flat.
> 
> Taliesin has entirely different kind of presence, being a quite different sort of immortal.
> 
> **Ceirdwyn is cognate to Ceridwen, one of the possible meanings of which is Poetry-Woman.


End file.
